


Veritas Invictus

by stover



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe, Coming of Age, Developing Friendships, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Pokemon AU, Rags to Riches, Slow Burn, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 01:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20498657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stover/pseuds/stover
Summary: All I want in life is fame, power, and for vision and dental to be included in my health insurance plan. That’s pretty much it.Oh, and my Pokemon.But I think for any trainer, that last bit goes without saying.To officially join the ranks as a Gym Leader in Veritas, there’s a series of trials you must undergo to test your resolve. Most trials have been pretty tame, so Jean must be the luckiest guy on the planet for him to get a trial experience that starts off with him finding a dead body in the woods.





	Veritas Invictus

All I want in life is fame, power, and for vision and dental to be included in my health insurance plan. That’s pretty much it.

Oh, and my Pokemon. 

But I think for any trainer, that last bit goes without saying.

So that’s me now, a guy with big dreams and a lit team to back him up. Not any different from how I started out, sort of. I was always the kid talking about making it big, except back then I was just a kid gassing himself up instead of building bridges and climbing steps. You know, hard work and effort and all that jazz. The stuff kids don’t want to do, cause work is work no matter how you wanna sell it. 

Okay, maybe it doesn’t seem like that for all kids. Some of them. Like, a few.

But me? That was definitely what it was. I just plain old didn’t wanna work. Couldn’t make me do anything, period. I don’t even know how my ma got me to wipe my own ass.

My folks were real good to me until I hit fifteen (more on that later). They were well off, had a nice house, had good jobs, and a steady income. The whole package. They even loved each other, probably. (I don’t know. I never really asked and it’s sort of too late to ask now.) 

Like most parents that had a lot of coin, my parents made it their life work to make sure I got the very best. Which, in my case… ended up being a whole lot of elitist stuff. Battle Bond Academy, Moxie Prep School, Skill Link Institute… If there was a flashy logo or a catchy jingle, and a well-paid, well-dressed hypeman that showed up on commercials during the 7 o’clock evening news, I got signed up and sent off with a suitcase and a kiss goodbye.

You’re probably starting to get a little bit of an understanding why kid me didn’t have the best relationship with my folks.

Anyway, I didn’t do much at Battle Bond (I hated that place), and Moxie Prep was more like boot camp on steroids (it got shut down after four months), and Skill Link Institute was… 

Actually, that place wasn’t all that bad. 

Still ditched most of my classes. (Teachers were assholes. Kids were okay.)

So yeah, after six or so years of me blowing off most of my early trainer years to skip school and hang out with bikers and whatever other punks were out there in Castelia (except those fucking clowns), you can imagine how my parents took it when they found out city cops wanted them to come in for their Baby’s First Booking. 

I was fifteen.

And boy, was I stupid.

My pa left around that time. I think he couldn’t take it, seeing his kid fucking up so bad, again and again, and decided to pack it up and dip.

My ma posted bail a few weeks later.

I still don’t know how she got all that money.

So yeah, imagine me, at fifteen: no pa, had a ma that wanted to both kill me _ and _ ground me for life, made the family broke as shit, and had no Pokemon left (that’s another story). The picture of delinquency, and a grade-A, jerkass idiot.

All in all, I was a pretty stupid kid growing up.

But it was that time, when I was at my all-time low, that I finally got around to taking my first few steps toward making it big. One night, I took the family’s Vulpix (that thing will follow anybody with a sweet malasada), snuck into the neighbor’s yard, stole their bike, and booked it to the nearest port to sneak onto the first freighter headed for Veritas Island.

And why was I suddenly interestd in going to a no-name island out in the middle of the goddamn ocean? 

Because they were calling all trainers for an open position: Official Gym Leader of the Neo-Trost Gym.

And I became that guy.

Still don’t have vision or dental, but I figure that’s something I can work out.


End file.
